Thursday, 11 October 2012

eBay enhances it's social commerce

As yesterday marked the launch of eBay's new logo, the online marketplace has announced changes to it's homepage, allowing customers to tailor what they see to suit their own shopping interests, enhancing the levels of social commerce throughout the site.

The feed uses a customers shopping preferences along with their own personal interests to display products from different eBay stores that they believe the user will be interested in. The new feature has been compared to the social media platform Pinterest in it's layout and design.

How will this help online stores?

The benefit of this for an ecommerce store is that the feature can almost be used as a form of retargeting within eBay itself. When a customer purchases from your store, the shopping preferences will be stored within their account details. When the customer visits the home page in the future, there is a chance that similar products from your online store will be displayed for them to see, as they will be similar to the product which the customer originally purchased from the store.

Furthermore, it also means customers purchasing from one of your rivals or another store that sells similar products will also be of benefit for you in the long term, as it allows your products to be viewed by these customers, allowing them to become aware of your brand and possibly visit your store in the future to make a purchase.

eBay are asking all customers who use the new design to provide feedback on how they are finding the new layout.